The 20 biggest logo redesigns of 2013

We look back at the most important logo redesigns of the last 12 months. What do you think of them now?

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On the day a new logo design is launched for a familiar brand, the first reactions are usually overwhelmingly negative. Once some time has passed and the new design has entered daily use, though, it can be a different story.

So here we take a look back at the 20 biggest brands to release a new logo in 2013. Now you've got used to them and see them in context, what do you really think of them? Let us know in the comments below!

01. American Airlines

NEW LOGO: simpler and more streamlined

Created by Futurebrand, a brand new American Airlines logo was launched at the beginning of 2013. The new design meant a sad goodbye to the classic Helvetica logo designed by Vignelli Associates which had been in service since 1967 (shown below).

OLD LOGO: will be much missed

02. ITV

NEW LOGO: colours vary according to background

Also in January, the UK's second biggest broadcaster launched its rebrand. While many logos became more stripped back and minimalist this year, the new ITV logo, which was created by Rudd Studio with the assistance of Fontsmith, went in the opposite direction, with the addition of curves and colour.

OLD LOGO: far more corporate

03. VH1

NEW LOGO: incorporates a plus sign

Another TV channel to rebrand in January, VH1's new logo was its first in years and now incorporated a '+1'. The music and reality TV channel, which worked with Gretel on its new identity, said the name change signified how VH1 had become "the ultimate mash up of music + pop culture + nostalgia".

OLD LOGO: dated and overfussy

04. Brooklyn Library

NEW LOGO: makes playful use of text-speak

Why would a library misspell its own name? The new branding for the public library in Brooklyn, New York included a new logo which reinvented its name as 'Bklyn' - a subtle pun on the text speak-age abbreviation for book ('bk'). The new design, created by Eight and a Half, also reduces down better on mobile devices than its predecessor.

OLD LOGO: didn't reduce down well on mobile devices

05. South Australia

NEW LOGO: promoting Australia's fourth largest state

This new logo, released in February to promote South Australia, depicts a stylised map of the whole country in red, with the state depicted in ochre as a door. The new design, created by Ken Cato of Cato Partners, replaces the old star-based logo (below). South Australia premier Jay Weatherill said he wanted a new brand campaign because he was tired of people overseas confusing South Australia with South Africa.

OLD LOGO: this design was created by Parallax and KWP

06. Spotify

NEW LOGO: leaner and more professional-looking

Above is the new logo music streaming giant Spotify slapped across its website in March. The globe emblem lost much of its styling, most noticeably the shadow effect, to give it a more two-dimensional look. Overall, the look was of a company that wanted to look more grown-up and professional, and in that sense it was reminiscent of the previous year's eBay logo update.

OLD LOGO: More fun but now looking dated

07. Doritos

Doritos now has a unified global identity

Tortilla chip brand Doritos released this new logo and packaging in March, giving itself a unified global identity for the first time ever. The new look was designed by PepsiCo’s Frito-Lay division in partnership with Hornall Anderson, whose UK team visited cities across the world to find out how to best achieve an emotional connection with its core demographic of teens and young adults.

08. Facebook

NEW LOGO: Facebook made a small but important change to its logo

The biggest logo redesign of the year in terms of brand reach was in other ways the most minor. In fact, most Facebook users probably didn't notice any difference when it introduced this new logo (above) in April earlier this month. The two changes were the lack of shading and the way the bottom of the 'f' now disappears into negative space.

OLD LOGO: now looks a bit fussy by comparison

09. GitHub

NEW LOGO: streamlined and more formal

GitHub, the popular social network for web developers and programmers, also updated its visual identity in April, with a new logo (above) that was much more formal looking than its predecessor (below), changing the title from all-lowercase to camel case and removing the 'social coding' tag of the old logo design (below).

OLD LOGO: the 'social coding' tag is no more

10. Commonwealth Games 2016

The next-but-one Commonwealth Games revealed its logo this April

Okay, not exactly a redesign but as there is a new interpretation of what is meant by the Olympic brand identity every four years it's included. The Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games revealed its logo in a ceremony in Queensland, Australia this April. The colours symbolise the Gold Coast's beaches, water and hinterland. Whatever you think of it, it's certainly less controversial than the London 2012 logo.

11. 2018 Winter Olympics

The design incorporates the five traditional Korean colours

2013 also saw the launch of the official logo for the Winter Olympics in Korea in 2018 (see above for the explanation behind the broadening of the 'redesign' remit...). Created by HA Jong-Joo, the design incorporates the five traditional Korean colours. The main symbol is a combination of the Korean characters which spell the 'P' sound (for Pyeong) and the 'ch' sound (of Chang).

12. Instagram

NEW LOGO: more fluid and instantly familiar

The clear 2013 trend for logo designs was to design a simpler, flatter and more professional piece of branding. Case in point is the new Instagram logo. It was an evolutionary update, retaining the instantly-recognizable Instagram script's look. Designer Mackey Saturday said. "It was always essential that the design maintained everything that we've all grown to know and love about Instagram while creating a logotype that was more refined, durable, and that positioned the brand for expansion."

OLD LOGO: based on the Billabong typeface

13. Mall of America

NEW LOGO: Bright interchangeable colours

The world's largest retail complex, Mall of America celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2013, and to mark the occasion it released a new logo design. Created by local agency Duffy & Partners, it was a big departure from the previous logo (below), based on dynamic-looking star design with bright colours designed to be interchangeable.

OLD LOGO: patriotic red, white and blue

14. MailChimp

A refreshed look for the email newsletter brand

Jessica Hische has many fans amongst lovers of typography and in July she was asked to tackle a logo redesign for newsletter platform MailChimp. "They didn’t want to do a massive overhaul," Hische explained, "they just wanted to give their current mark a facelift." Hische lightened the weight overall and improved the vector drawing, with the letterforms revised for legibility, especially at small sizes.

15. Hooters

NEW LOGO: The revamped design was based on consumer research

Breast-obsessed restaurant chain Hooters is one of the US's top brands and a uniquely American institution. Much like the concept itself, the company's logo (below) served for 30 years as an example of a design that shouldn't work, but does. In July, though, Atlanta design firm Sky Design gave it a more modern streamlined look (above), although the essential details remained, including the cartoon typography, the owl and the double-entendre use of the bird's eyes.

OLD LOGO: less cartoony and more illustrative

16. TGI Fridays

NEW LOGO: Simplified shape, no apostrophe

TGI Fridays released this new, cleaner and more contemporary-looking logo design this summer. Created by Edinburgh-based agency Teviot the new logo retained the trademark colour scheme and stripes of the old (below), but the new design was now far more streamlined inside a simple rectangle. The letters are now all in capitals, rather than the mixture of sentence case and title case of the previous design, and the punctuation has all gone - even the apostrophe in "Friday's".

OLD LOGO: This more ornate design was in place from 2004-13

17. Yahoo

NEW LOGO: Cleaned up while retaining many familiar elements

Marissa Mayer, one of 20 original employees in the early days of Google, was appointed president and CEO of Yahoo in July 2012 and wasted no time in stamping her authority on the company. Her latest scheme, dubbed '30 days of Yahoo logos', involved releasing 30 new logos over August and September - one per day.

The final, permanent logo (above) was released on the final day. Using the font Optima and the colour Pantone Violet C, it was a much cleaner design compared to the original (below), while retaining elements such as the exclamation mark, the slightly enlarged second 'O' and the purple colour that had been in place since 2009.

OLD LOGO: The dancing letters of old are gone

But that wasn't all. Mayer wrote a controversial blog post in which she described how she and a team created the new logo over the course of a weekend. But this incensed some professional designers and typographers with what they perceived as a glib and overly mathematical attitude to the design process. Such was the uproar that one interviewer can be seen on video asking her, to her face: "What the **** happened here?".

18. Google

NEW LOGO: Hello flatness my old friend

After a few weeks of confusion, with Google's new logo (above) accidentally being released into the wild, the search giant finally rolled it out on its homepage in September. In tandem with the trend for flat design, the shadows of the old logo (below) were flattened.

OLD LOGO: Was phased out over the course of 2013

However, don't accuse Google of making a knee-jerk reaction to the flat design trend - this 'new' logo had actually been in use on internal company documents for years.

19. Bing

NEW LOGO: The future's bright, the future's orange

We waited years for a new search engine logo, then three turned up in the same month. Along with Yahoo and Google, Microsoft threw its hat into the redesign ring with this striking new logo design for Bing (above). Cast in a customised version of Microsoft's Segoe font, the identity ditched the trademark blue of the old design (below) for golden orange - the exact hue that Microsoft uses in one quarter of its own flag-like logo.

OLD LOGO: The blue's now been banished from Bing

20. Philips

NEW LOGO: Harks back to the company's earlier shield design

Leading Dutch technology company Philips unveiled this new logo and identity across the entire brand in November. Based on the strapline 'innovation and people', the new shield logo harked back to the company's original logo design back in 1934. But this new look shield had curvier aspects to it, with thicker and softer lines throughout.

OLD LOGO: The blue wordmark will continue to be used in tandem with the new logo